-1 Grunting, he stabbed the key at the lock and missed. Most likely, this was because an awful lot of blood was in his eye. Only reason why he missed. Not because his leg was all twisted up either. Wait, he didn't have to miss did he?
Not even bothering to raise his hand for effect, he snapped his fingers. He tried at least. They were less than perfectly operable at the moment and only bent against one another.
The door swung open, regardless, and he fell in.
"Uuuuh," he muttered from the floor. "Amy's going to kill me for this."
With an effort seen only in the dying, he grabbed on and pulled himself across the stainless steel deck of the TARDIS.
"Honey…" he groaned. "I'm ho-ome."
Laying on his back, he stared up at the ceiling. At the gold lights as they played softly on the amber ceiling. He watched the portholes as they reflected the light. If he wasn't in the process of shuffling it off, he decided this was a grand place to relax.
Then, he felt it start. Like the first half of a hiccup, really, but more. Oh so very much more. The hiccup ran through his limbs and his hairs, through his eyes and nose and toes and most of all his mind. His mind was the roughest part. When a Time Lord's mind hiccupped, that was a lot to hiccup.
Still, he was used to it. Sort of. Not really. Perhaps when he went his final time, it wouldn't be like this. Like nails and forever. Like glass veins under his skin and screaming only he could hear. Like going mad when you'd just gotten used to sane. All his memories rose up to flood him while every nerve crackled hot and ready and stabbing.
"Here we go," he said.
The door to the TARDIS swung shut and he groaned louder as the regeneration knitted him up a bit so he could stand. Regenerations went better when he was standing.
Every one was, essentially, the same, but every one was just different enough to be hell. Like the last two, he'd gotten cocky and figured he sucked up enough energy to start two solar systems. Unlike the last one, he wasn't in the mood to see times long ago. He wasn't feeling nostalgic this go round, so he didn't pack it in for as long. Plus, there had been the shrapnel. And the dog. Damn that dog.
Wishing he was closer to the console (he'd been heavily invested in it this time), he slowly stood. His fingers were working again, if only because they were already rebuilding. Maybe he'd be shorter this time? Ginger? Just a change of pace really. He'd been everything else.
He saluted the console from where he stood. He was thinking about her just then. The TARDIS, as she had once been for a brief time, came unbidden in his thoughts, which were vast to begin with, but in their current state bouncing madly in a tight space. Just as quickly, he flipped to his granddaughter, then Tegan, next was that lovely girl at the party in Dev-cannae 4 (or was it 5?), Ace, toast this morning, Rory, Amy, mail. That's what it had been- mail. He'd met her for the first time. She'd called him "her thief."
"Just popping off for a bit," he said. "I shall be back in short order and we'll have us another round, eh?" He adjusted his tie, and settled his jacket. "Geronimoooooooo!"
He was taken then, every cell lighting up like nuclear fire, like hot plasma and he was doing it again, he was burning another control room. Maybe he was just getting finicky in his old age. Better to burn the bridge and never worry about it again kind of thing.
This time was different though. As his anguish screamed around the abyss and just long enough to wave at Death, the TARDIS took full advantage of the fact that this time, this time he decided to unleash enough energy to kick start two solar systems (and a spare nova) while all the TARDIS had to do was keep the doors shut.
Hair grew, features rearranged, mass burned off in some places and reformed elsewhere in the nimbus of energy he was loosing. The TARDIS took over, sucking it up, the fires never catching, but moving, channeling away to a room rarely used. However, the cue for change was acknowledged and the energy that could be spared was and accelerated the console room's shift. The next one used a new desktop after all.
The howl resolved then and died off, the light blew out and the Doctor, the last of the Time Lords, the Coming Storm stumbled a bit and caught herself on the rail.
"Woo!" she said. "That was a bit of a thing wasn't it?"
She goggled her head around, eyebrow arched as she patted at herself. Her mind still hot and excited. So many memories, so little time.
"NO!" she barked. "Plenty of time!" And with a bound, she ran up the gangplank. "And space. Look at that. Space. Area. Room. Ooom. So nice with words you know?"
She grinned and ran her hands across the console. "Hello, Sexy. Whadja think?" She twirled, still in tattered tweed and bowtie, which bulged in completely different places now. "Little different this time 'round, but I've been thinking, yeah, time for a change and so I changed, funny that, eh? Lots of funny. Say are you using a new desktop?"
She twirled again. "You are! I like it! New things all around, new things! Love 'em! What've we got here- whoa haven't had hair this long in, well, wait, no, yes, I didn't. Never this long." She flipped the dusky blond strands around. "Ugh, Romana grabs the tall purple thing like a jacket and I still can't make ginger! If any other Time Lord were around, I'd be a stock of laughing."
She slammed her elbow into the console so that she could lay her face in her hand while drumming the console with her other. After a long moment of this, she patted at herself again. "New fat deposits in all the interesting places, legs check, arms good, no tail- shame." She put a hand to her face. "Is this my nose? It's so charming! Hello nose, I am the Doctor and I will be with you for the rest of your life- however long that is. Not long knowing me. Millennia in a year, that's me. Why is the room spinning?"
The Doctor blinked up at the uppy-downy thing, acutely aware that the room was not making sense, so she keeled over.
When she woke, the intensity brought on by regeneration had passed and she felt the last of the nascent energies breathe out of her with a gasp. Light danced in the air and she smiled, letting her eyes close again. She must have been out a while, because she felt done.
She. Heh. He wanted a change and he got it all right. This would be completely new all right.
Not bad of course. He'd heard good things. Other Time Lords going this way from regeneration to regeneration. Skix had a hell of a lot of fun as she recalled. Bellaine kept hopping back and forth that it was more vogue just to call Bellaine "it" and be done. Everyone at uni figured it did that just for the honor. Bellaine always was too keen on non-sexed species…
Anywho! Not a problem. Just take a while to get used to. The fainting was new. Had she fainted? Really? Perhaps this body couldn't take that. Ugh, there was a possible sexist implication she didn't want to wander into. Wait. No.
No, no, no. Just regeneration, yes, but difficulties and sudden pressure drop. Wait. There had been. The cabin had gone all upsy-downsy and she'd been all downsy upsy and… Well, of course she'd pass out from that kind of strain, but why would the TARDIS-
Before she could think further though, her face starting to scrunch up in consternation, she felt a hand, cool and reassuring run over her brow and across her jaw. New eyes snapping open, she turned them and came upon a face. She couldn't quite place it.
"Hello, my Thief," said the face.
She placed it.
Bolting upright, she was no longer in tattered tweed and shirt and bowtie, but knickers and loose shirt and a bed sheet. On a bed. Whoa. This bed? She hadn't been in this bed in a while.
Recollecting, she aimed herself at the woman across her. "You," she said as intelligently as she could.
The woman, the woman the TARDIS had looked like when its soul had gone loose, that woman nodded. Granted, it was not an exact replica. Her hair was no longer Idris's piled high appearance, nor was she in the laced corset. She wore a simple white shift, her hair a cascade of tousled black down her back. The rest was the same though. So familiar with just a hint of difference: Pale skin, intense gaze- it looked like flecks of gold were in her eyes.
The Doctor felt incredibly disadvantaged since she didn't know how she looked. She'd just regenerated. This was the Time Lord equivalent of running to the corner store with shampoo still in her hair and a towel. Especially when the TARDIS was looking at her and-
"Wait a second," the Doctor said. "I thought we couldn't do this again, you said-"
"I saved a piece of my organic genetic material," she said, her hand tracing idle circles in the bedcloth. "When I break down, I think how sad it was and keep some so that feeling could be a part of me because it felt so good too. When you stumbled in with all that excess regeneration energy I thought I'd…" She shrugged, an impish smile on her face.
"Alive," the Doctor was smiling. She patted at her face as her Sexy Girl smirked her agreement. "You'll have to excuse me," she added. "I'm a bit out of sorts at the mo."
"Female this time I see."
"How am I?" the Doctor asked straightening her posture.
"Taller."
"Really. I've been pretty tall before. Isn't that just interesting… Eyes?"
"Hazel."
"Smile?" she flashed it.
The TARDIS produced an impressively sarcastic look.
"Oy. You're as fresh as me. You shouldn't be able to do that."
"Yes," the TARDIS replied. "But I'm driving recycled."
The Doctor looked around the room then and just as she opened her mouth, the TARDIS put two fingers to her lips. "Not all of me," she said, anticipating her Thief. "Just enough for a little bit."
The Doctor's new eyes closed as tears rushed to fill them. "How long?"
"Two solar systems and a nova you had in you."
"That could be universes."
"But I'm not so small."
A new smile blossomed on the new Doctor's new face. "You never were." She threw back the covers. "So we're on a clock, I can do clocks. I'm good with 'em. This is a rare opportunity, truly rare, what do you want to do? I can't really take you anywhere, but now that it's settled down out there, maybe a bodega? Just a small one. Only a little radioactive and-"
The TARDIS put her fingers to her thief's lips again. "You were not as cute as you've been," she said. "Quite handsome really."
The Doctor looked down at the fingers, then up at the eyes that were hooded. He knew those eyes: bedroom eyes. They were clearly in a bedroom and those were the eyes for it. She swallowed.
"You're quite the smooth talker," the Doctor said around the fingers.
"It's not all of me, you know," she said, sliding across the covers. "Just enough of me."
"Enough?"
"To do this."
The TARDIS is not a living being in the conventional sense. Conventional being that a living being is born, has sex and dies, doing varying degrees of living in between. Trees are living beings. People, bananas, microscopic cells, all kinds of living for living beings. The TARDIS is just a cut above all that, or perhaps more accurately a cut beyond, more than even a certain Time Lord, one who flunked his exams thoroughly as he grew up and bolted at the site of the Vortex. One so mighty and so mad as to steal her so she could steal him. So when a TARDIS climbs into a person, something that just isn't built to carry even the smallest fraction that it broke itself down into, it knows how much time it has. When it's done this willingly and with forethought, she knows exactly what she's doing.
The Doctor remembered when his TARDIS kissed him. He wasn't much of a kisser then. Little too uncomfy. Last few traveling companions had been pretty grabby. Or perhaps it just wasn't his style. Maybe he was a better kisser before? What mattered was that she apparently was a good kisser now. A great one in fact.
Her mouth worked instinctively with the woman pressed against her. Slow and growing, climbing into one another with slowly building heat and pressure. The Doctor may not have been a kisser before, but she was one now.
Or maybe that was the TARDIS.
They came up for air. "Oh, Sexy," the Doctor purred, licking her lips. "You are a dirty, dirty girl."
Her cocked smile had a superior eyebrow to match. The Doctor liked that. She seriously thought that was a great thing.
"And I know just how naughty a lady you will be," the TARDIS replied.
The Doctor's smile was ecstatic. "I'm eleven hundred years old," she said. "I've known naughty since it was in knee-socks."
The Doctor led this time. As she pressed her tongue softly through the TARDIS's barrier, licking at her lips on the way in, she felt her teeth. Even things, all small and orderly and there was her tongue and no, the Doctor was still not a good kisser, but she was. Oh, how she was. She knew how to tango with those lips, letting her thief find the little purchases and pushing back when she relaxed.
Leaning back to gulp air again, the Doctor dove, but this time for her neck and taking what she'd learned in kissing, she planted hot breezes down the slope of her girl's neck. Her Sexy Girl exposed herself more, letting the shift's strap fall to expose more of her neck, opening up her whole shoulder for investigation.
This was more of her Thief's forte: exploration. Giddy, mad exploration.
Her thief snuck an arm around her back and pulled Sexy to her, their bodies hot against one another, new energy crackling now. No other thoughts, no companions, just an adventure now, a new, bold one that would not go in any history books, but would definitely make for terrifically bawdy pub songs throughout time and space.
She moaned as her thief stole heat from her at the arch of her back.
Kissing her clavicle, the Doctor looked into the drunken eyes of his old girl, his Sexy, his TARDIS and whispered, "I'm running. Catch me if I lose you."
The TARDIS, Sexy, looked at her Thief, her Madwoman and grinned in libertine bliss. "You'll never lose me. I won't let you."
They tumbled then, the bed sheet sliding away from their hands as the Doctor covered her instead.
The TARDIS kicked away the pillow at their feet. She wriggled slightly beneath her Thief, getting a good grip on her back.
The Doctor yelped, her voice catching and her breasts pushing against the white shirt. Eyes fluttering she reoriented on her Sexy Girl and dove to just behind her left ear where she pipped little hot whispers of air.
The unique sensation pulled the TARDIS's leg up between her Thief's.
The Doctor pressed down on it. Newly minted flesh sprang to life, warm and excited at the contact and the Time Lord shuddered deep in her soul.
"My sweet thief, we are too clothed for this," crooned the TARDIS.
"Yes! Yes we are."
Snatching at the hems of the shift, the Doctor pulled up and her Sexy Girl raised her arms at the perfect time to let it zip off unencumbered. The Doctor marveled at her beauty. Somehow, there was a blue sheen to her and gold light danced in her eyes.
She wore the same mischief in them as she yanked on her Thief's shirt, catching the Doctor on the chin, mussing her hair.
Brushing thin, sandy strands free, the Doctor's grin went crooked and she raised up on knees to hook her thumbs on either side of her underwear and slide out. Bending to kick them off she lay her breasts atop her Sexy Girl's.
The TARDIS smiled at her Thief and for a moment they were still, drinking each other in. The moment melted as her Thief returned to her neck, looking for clues and seeking her pleasure. She said nothing, leaving only brief moans and the roll of her hips to guide her companion.
The Doctor could feel when her Sexy Girl twined her fingers in her hair and began to stroke, playing till the ends with fanciful fingers. She let her, kissing a trail all the way down. Over the arch of her chest, into the valley of her stomach, across the dark forest and coming to rest on her mound.
Her body pliant, she was patient as her Thief came to stop right where she wanted her. She bent her legs, long, pale things to wrap around her Madwoman's head and make the TARDIS's intentions and desires quite clear.
The Doctor smiled. He'd been married. A few times too. He may have been rubbish at kissing, but he was great at consummation. Licking her lips, she muttered, "All right, let's see if this new tongue of mine is up to the task."
The TARDIS thought it was. She moaned loudly, the sound echoing off the walls and causing the lights to shift and flicker. The moan was a little off though and a tiny smile curled up the Doctor's mouth as she heard her make her noise. Just hers. He made her make that noise before and now it was her time to make her Sexy Girl do it all over again.
Her Sexy Girl's hips bucking, the Doctor rode her, probing, licking, exploring. Somehow her sex smelled of fresh soil after rain and it was beautiful.
Her moan growing louder, her noise getting higher, the TARDIS wanted more and more. She could feel herself on the brink, just above something that felt as wide and vast as the universe and if only her Thief could push her, push her now, get her across to the void and she would-
The sound that came from her shook every cell in the TARDIS proper and suddenly the core engine lit up and they were off, the blue box spinning through the Vortex.
The Doctor came up to wipe her mouth slightly and her Sexy Girl grabbed the top of her head. Eyes flashing, she grinned. "Give me more you brilliant woman."
"Gladly," she replied.
She then found her new body was quick. Quick enough to disentangle the shining woman's hand and get her own legs wrapped around her Sexy Girl's body. She eased against her eternal companion, her constant guide and heat blossomed up from between her legs.
"Thought we could both get something out of this," the Doctor said with an evil twinkle.
"You talk too much," the TARDIS told her Thief as she already set to work rubbing against her.
"I don't talk enooouuuuuuuunnh!"
She bucked against her, silencing her for once, thank the Vortex. That was all that was needed because a half-beat later, they were moving in rhythm. With each other, with the spin of the blue box, with the thrum of their own bodies.
The Doctor had two hearts and both slammed madly against her chest. As she gasped for air, she wondered how her Sexy Girl could possibly be keeping up like she was if she was just a recycled human. Then, she didn't care because the heat grew more and she felt the climb happening and she was going hotter and hotter. Yes, this is what she needed, yes, this, yes this a thousand times this. Her Sexy Girl may have been near where she was too, or maybe she'd already gotten there. The Doctor couldn't tell, as her eyes were only mostly in her companion's direction and she was working to keep her balance.
She caught something start to trickle wet against her thigh and that almost threw her out until her beautiful, her lovely, her sexy, sexy, Sexy Girl brought it home and she was up and over a new abyss entirely. She hadn't been there in what felt like ages. Above and beyond it all and suddenly that wasn't all. Her Sexy Girl had gotten clever, oh so very clever and snuck her fingers up in her and she wasn't just Above and Beyond she was bucking there, hopping and kicking with each jolt.
Half-gasping, half yipping, the Doctor threw her brilliant mind against the tide of ecstasy she rolled through and got her thumb up against her Sexy Girl and leaned forward.
The TARDIS bit her lip and her eyes rolled back and she was very pleased with her Madwoman, her naughty Thief as she was coaxed back up and over and brought into flying bliss again. And again. And again. And again and again and again.
When their rhythms matched, when they found the moment, when they fell into the rarest of timed moments, they called out in the Vortex as twin voices. Very different twin voices, but the same in exploding pleasure. They were explorers and adventurers, scientists and romantics, companions and lovers on a level no one else in the universe could truly comprehend. They wanted each other, they needed each other and for that time in that bedroom, they were with each other in loud, echoing release.
Mortality eventually took over though and they were just tangled then, the heat from each of them keeping them plenty warmed and satisfied. They curled to one another, the Doctor atop her chest with her own head pressed down.
The Doctor listened to her heartbeat. Singular. Amazing that she, the one with two hearts was feeling paced and panting. She felt her Sexy Girl stroking her hair, idly, contentedly. She sighed deliciously. Last of the Time Lords, survivor of the Great Time War, only Gallifreyan to bed a TARDIS- yes, the Doctor was feeling quite good about herself right then. Which is why when she sighed again, she had already resigned herself.
"How much longer?" she said, her voice softer than she thought she'd make it.
"A bit," the TARDIS replied.
"Like a bit," the Doctor said, pulling herself up so she was eye level. "Great unit of measure, you know? Longer than a tick, shorter than a while. Great thing."
She nodded, her golden eyes merry, but sad.
The Doctor traced sigma equations on her chest. "You're very cruel to do this to me again." She let her finger drag in the loose circles of complex math, her voice low and honest. "Give me something so amazing and wonderful and say, 'Oop, gotta be in early, ta!' I mean-"
Her fingers were on her lips again. She was smiling. "You will talk too much," she said softly.
"Yeah," she murmured, her lips brushing soft skin. "Then let's not talk, eh?"
The Doctor wrapped a possessive arm around her Sexy Girl and kissed her forehead, then her lips.
The TARDIS took a leg around her Thief and propped her head beneath her chin.
They lay entwined until the Doctor's eyes fluttered close again.
When she woke, she was alone, pillow beneath her head and covers across her waist. She was still in the buff and for a brief moment, she thought she'd dreamed it all. Perhaps a post-regeneration hallucination or something brought on by too many fish fingers and custard. Then she saw the note, perfectly folded with blue paper into a little box.
Sitting up, she retrieved the paper and set about unfolding it. Scribbled in a precise hand that flared at the ends of each letter in quickly scrawled old Gallifreyan read:
"Told you I had a new idea about kissing."
The Doctor sat very still, her eyes closed and her breathing getting rough. When her eyes opened, they were wetter and she dashed at them, feeling heavy. She put it aside. There was always plenty of time later for that.
She went to the door and as it opened, the springs and sproings of the TARDIS echoed about her. She smiled and started padding down the hallway to the wardrobe room. She let her fingers trail across the walls, feeling every nook, every cranny of her Sexy Girl. She was in such great shape she was.
"You're still great, you sexy, sexy thing," she purred.
The TARDIS boomed low and away. Possibly emptying a room, possibly adjusting pressure somewhere within itself. The noise was cheerful and content and made the Doctor smile.
She quickened her pace. She needed a new outfit so she could show off for her girl.